The Lord will hear you not

Jerry Stratton, January 18, 2010

I’ve been writing the rule books in Word. It generally has sucked, but it was the only choice. About a year ago, a new version of Nisus Writer Pro added outline navigation; Word’s outlining was the only reason I was sticking with it. Since then, all new documents have been created with Nisus; given the long lead time I have, you haven’t seen any of them yet.

But I have updated The Adventure Guide’s Handbook, and have just finished updating The World of Highland Guidebook. Using Nisus instead of Word makes it possible to include vector images (PDF and EPS) in the files and still have them be images on upload; it also means much cleaner HTML, which in turn means being able to use the new CMS to display them.

The new version is mostly the same. The big change is that I’ve updated the maps as well. I redrew them in Inkscape as all one image, and use clipping boxes to get the part of the map I want for each section of the guidebook. Since I was redrawing the map, I also put in the parts to the west and to the south that I’d never gotten around to redoing on a computer. You’ll also notice a huge unknown square in the upper left—that’s a piece I never got around to, period. I have no idea what’s up there. Except that it’s cold.

The opening text about the evils of kings—from which comes the title of this post—is from Samuel in the King James version of the Bible. I’ve changed it a little here and there to reflect the lack of any surviving Bibles in Highland—and the fact that the King James Bible wasn’t written until 600 years after the Cataclysm, which means it was never written at all in Highland. At the time of the Cataclysm, there were no complete English-language Bibles. For that matter, English itself wasn’t recognizable as modern English at the time of the Cataclysm. It’s a convenient fiction that the language developed similarly following the destruction and re-arranging of the world. It makes riddles a whole lot easier.

You have to wonder about the wisdom of the elders, who, seeing that Samuel’s sons were prone to bribery, corruption, and bad judgement, decided what they really needed was a king to replace non-hereditary prophets.

Gods & Monsters

Weave fantasy stories around characters that you and your friends create. As a Gods & Monsters Adventure Guide you will present a fantastic world to your players’ characters: all of its great cities, lost ruins, deep forests, and horrendous creatures.

Highland provides a context for Gods & Monsters adventures. Highland is designed for the rural adventurer, where characters begin in small villages or remote areas and move in towards civilization as they learn more and more about their world’s past. It was designed as a version of the standard fantasy world imprinted on the American old west.